Why You Aren’t Reaching Your Followers on Facebook

Homebuilders and other small business owners are often worried about keeping up their posts on Facebook. It might seem like a good idea to put a lot of content out there on social media, hoping it will find and interest prospects, but what is the real reach? An article released this week on TIME.com discusses why businesses should no longer depend on their Facebook pages to organically reach followers.

The TIME article reports that companies’ posts dropped from reaching 12% of their followers in October to 6% in January. In fact, they report that eventually Facebook plans for only 1% to 2% of page followers to receive posts from company pages. That means that even if you’ve managed to gather 1,000 fans, only 10 of those will even see your posts. What are the odds that those followers are prospects interested in building a new home and not your employee, friend or family member? Probably not that great.

So what are your options?

First, you could choose to pay Facebook to promote your posts. This will help you reach more people on Facebook, but it’s still a promoted post, which is viewed very much like an ad. Prospective homebuyers are not likely to be impressed by all the great things you say about yourself. Instead, what they care about is what their friends and family have to say.

That brings us to your second option. Enable your past and current homeowners to become brand advocates for you on social media. Motivate and allow them to share photos of their new home or other content. These posts will reach friends and family of homeowners, who often make excellent prospects. Social media can be a great tool for gaining referral sales.

Stop worrying about what funny meme, home photo or decorating idea you’ll be posting on Facebook this week. Instead, focus on creating content that your homebuyers can share with their friends and family. A great way to do this is using the My Home’s Story app to post photos of buyers’ homes under construction. We’ve found that home buyers love sharing photos of their own home. When they receive the photo updates you’ve sent using the My Home’s Story app, it takes just a quick click for those photos to appear on Facebook, along with a link to the buyer’s web page. This not only spreads the word about you as a builder, but drives traffic to your website and increases referral sales. You can watch our video demo to see how it works.